


When do you lose yourself?

by natasha_carmen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natasha_carmen/pseuds/natasha_carmen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexandra had been through a lot for an eighteen year old. Her brother is dying, he best friend is dead, and now she's expected to start university. How is she expected to handle all of this when she feels like she died with her best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When do you lose yourself?

“365 days in a year. That’s 365 24 hour segments, or 8760 60 minute segments or 525600 60 second segments or… Well I guess you get the point. It’s a whole lot of time, yet seems like none at all.  
What does this have to do with anything, you may ask. Why am I bringing up the measurement of time? Well as each second passes it seems like nothing ever changes in everyday life. During each second seems like nothing is happening in your life, especially when you live in a small town where everyone has known you since you were in diapers or you’ve changed theirs. One second is merely another moment passing leaving you bored and trapped.  
Nothing seems to happen to you that can change anything in life in short spurts of time but when you look back a year later nothing is the exact same as it was in that single second of time, everything seems to be different than it once was. Time passes whether we want it to or not, and as time passes you change as a person, even if you don’t notice it. Everything can change in only a fraction of time.”

I had written this at the beginning of grade twelve for our first English assignment of our last year. I knew more now, I knew that life could take a turn in any direction at any time. Take what happened in everyone I knew life in my graduating year. Almost everyone I graduated with is taking the next step in their life, some starting a career others going to university. I was moving to a completely different State in the Northern part of the country today to begin my university career today. That was a huge change that was right in front of me and it was impossible to ignore.   
But the one change no one can ignore is definitely death. When someone dies who’s close to you everyone knows and it doesn’t only change your life but it changes how others perceive you. November 16th of my senior year is when I stopped believing that quote to be true. It was the day that my best friend, Alyssa Dardario, decided to take it upon herself to take her own life. That was the day that I lost the one person who had known my every single thought since we were three years old and I was forever labeled in as the fragile girl who’s best friend died.   
The funny thing was that I never cried though. I was labeled as fragile and unable to handle death but I had yet to shed a tear. Even the girls who hated Alyssa cried over her death, but not her best friend. I thought that meant something was obviously broken inside of me, I thought that I should have cried more tears than anyone else but I didn’t. I just didn’t cry any. When my mom told me she died she held me and convulsed with sobs but I just sat there feeling nothing.  
Our school psychologist tried to explain to us that everyone mourns differently when school started again. He told us that there would be councillors at the school all week and he highly recommended anyone who was friends with Alyssa go talk to one of them. I didn’t go though, I just watched as other students who didn’t really know her went into the offices and then came out looking less guilty.  
As the year went on Alyssa was forgotten and all the other changes that were going to happen in senior’s lives slowly began to become more important again. We all focused on school and getting into our dream universities, and just moving forward into our lives. The quote had already become completely irrelevant to me already but I couldn’t help but watch everyone else in my class notice how much our lives were changing so fast.  
At graduation our principal read my work. He said that one of our brightest students wrote it and he hoped we all lived by this for the rest of our lives. He tried to give it some deeper meaning, like I was saying that even when life seemed to be going horribly it could change for the better in no time. But the quote also meant that everything could go bad to worse in just a second. It was meant to say nothing in life was certain, not that everything was supposed to always get better.   
All my teachers came up to me after and congratulated me on having such a motivational piece of writing though. I didn’t tell them that they had interpreted it wrong though. I also didn’t decide to tell any of them that I’d been wrong, that if you actually pay attention to what’s happening around you that you can actually see things changing around you. Whether it is your parents growing even older or someone finally notice the fact that an era of their life is almost over. Changes are never hidden in time; you just need to be willing to keep an eye out for what was changing and you could try and control it because the changes became too drastic.  
Throughout the summer all I could see was changes. The fact that I was packing up everything to move to New York, my parent’s getting more and more worried about me going so far away after everything that happened to me, my brother growing up even more but only getting more sick. The changes sometimes may seem small and even go unnoticed by most people but I took comfort in being able to see them. I had taken comfort in the unknown for some time before Alyssa passed, the unknown couldn’t hurt me because I didn’t expect anything, and it couldn’t disappoint me. After she died though the unknown was what I feared the most. The unknown was something that was completely out of anyone’s hands and that didn’t seem safe anymore. Now I took comfort in what I knew.  
My future in New York had become the only unknown I looked forward to. I needed to get out of my hometown, away from Jacksonville where everyone knew me, so what better than to go and start a completely new life in a new city. All summer I worked and saved all my money so that I could afford to live while attending my dream school. It might not make any sense but having something change in my life completely by choice was hell of a lot easier than having it change because the universe wanted it to. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in New York but I did know that I wanted to go. If I didn’t leave now I feared I would get stuck living a life where I knew what was around every turn. Though that was appealing and seemed like the safer option I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.  
My parents had offered to drive me all the way to New York many times throughout the summer, but I turned them down. My brother, Cole, was in a really bad place right now, in and out of the hospital all the time, so I told them they should stay with him. He needed them much more than I did right now. I decided to take a plane there anyway; a flight from Jacksonville to Newark was almost as expensive as all the gas we would have paid for driving and it took much less time to get there.   
I wasn’t old enough to rent a car just yet so I just took a cab to the apartment building I was staying at. It was just outside of the city, when I spoke with the landlord in July she told me it was out of the city but just a 20-minute subway ride to the campus. It was in my price range and somewhat close to the campus. The only real problem was I didn’t know my roommate yet.  
I walked up the stairs to the third floor with my single suitcase and walked around the small landing. It was a cute building, somewhat modern but you could tell it was old building. It looked exactly like the apartment building from What’s Your Number with Chris Evans. The irony that I was also in 6C, the same number Anna Faris’ character lived in in the movie.   
I stared at the number for a second once I actually found the room before actually knocking on the door. I was supposed to be moving into an apartment with Alyssa, have my best friend as a roommate and life was going to be perfect. Now I might even end up with a total crazy who I was stuck living with. Well I guess I could move onto the street if I really didn’t like her but that didn’t seem overly appealing to me.   
To my relief though someone who seemed pretty normal opened that door, and when I say pretty normal I mean she still had a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth and no pants on. Her shirt covered enough though, she looked maybe a total of 5 feet tall. I wasn’t much taller than that but she was tiny, probably could kill me 90 different ways still. She didn’t seem to have crazy eyes though, nor did she open the door bearing a machete and yell “dang kids, get off the lawn!” so I think I was mostly in the clear on the crazy scale.   
“I’m so sorry!” She said with toothpaste almost pouring out of her mouth.   
I almost didn’t know what she said, but I figured I had heard right considering how flustered she looked. My flight had landed early, but I didn’t think it landed that early. Maybe she forgot that I was moving in today, which would have been something I would have just forgotten about if I were in her position. “Come on in, I’ll just be a second.”   
I smiled as she scurried farther into the apartment leaving me alone. How could she have even been sure I was the one who was supposed to move into today? Maybe I was here to rob her.   
I walked in a little farther and looked around at what the place was like. There was a kitchen area to the left with a small living room beside it on the right. Those made up the whole common area and there were four other doors, two off the kitchen side and two across from them off the living room. It was not overly decorated but it was really nice. The appliances in the kitchen looked new enough not to kill us with a spontaneous fire and the furniture didn’t look like it’s been picked up on the side of the road so I’d say that was a win. It looked homey; it was nice and simple but still slightly cluttered so you knew people lived here.   
I was about to go sit down on one of the stools at the kitchen counter when the girl remerged from what I assumed was the bathroom, which explained one of the doors. “Sorry doll,” she said walking over to me with a warm smile. I don’t think someone under the age of 60 before had ever called me doll before but there had to be a first time for everything I guess. “You must be Alexandra, so nice to meet you.” She held her hand out to me and I shook it with a polite smile of my own face. Mine must have looked much more forced than hers, she seemed like she could really put on an act. I had heard that New Yorkers were supposed to be rude people, not nice ones.  
“You must be Mackenzie.” I’d creeped my landlord on Facebook and this girl was far to young to be her, the only thing I could assume was that she was my new roommate. “Sorry, I’m a tad early. The plane moved faster than we were all expecting I guess.” She nodded, a smile still planted on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was just one of those people who were fake nice or actually nice. “Really nice place though, nicely decorated.”   
“Oh yes, let me give you a tour!” She said clapping her hands and turning towards the rest of the apartment. I didn’t think I needed much of a tour, it was all pretty small. “And feel free to add anything you want out here, or get rid of anything that’s here. It’s not very decorated I know and I want you to feel like it’s your home too, you know?” I nodded even though she wasn’t facing me still. I had nothing that wouldn’t fit in my room as of now.  
“Thanks, I don’t have much with me though.” I told her grabbing my suitcase out of the doorway.   
“Any who,” she half sang. “This is the living room and kitchen. I guess it’s kind of obvious when you look at it. It is really small but it’s home.” She said looking at me again with a smile again. She seemed like she was somewhere else right now though, like she was distracted. I almost told her she didn’t need to be here but she just kept going.   
“There’s a study behind that door over there,” she pointed at the door by the living room that was currently closed. “It’s meant to be a third bedroom but it’s only the two of us.” I made a mental note to look in there a little later when she didn’t open the door. “Now this is my bedroom,” She pointed at the door right beside the study, which was swung wide open with the light on so I could see it all. Her room was messy; it reminded me of Alyssa’s room whenever I would go over there. It wasn’t the messy you needed to hide too, it was the messy that parents would roll their eyes at but leave alone for you to just live in. “I don’t care if you come in when I’m home or borrow my stuff with my permission but do not enter at any other point, okay?”  
I nodded; I didn’t plan on having to go in her room for much when she wasn’t home anyway. “Is that my room then?” I asked moving towards the door next to the bathroom slowly still looking at her. She nodded as I reached for the door handle. It was an empty room with lilac walls but looked around the same size as her room. “Can I paint it?” I asked.  
“Yes you can,” she said pulling on a pair of jeans that were hanging over the couch. I could tell that she tried really hard to clean the apartment up for me, I was slightly scared as to how messy it was normally. “I really hate to be this person but I have to run. If you need anything my number is on the fridge, and you don’t need to lock up if you leave. We live in a decent part of town so people likely won’t break in.” I nodded as she ran out walking into my new room.   
“Welcome home,” I whispered to myself, now planning out what to do with my room.


End file.
